ANNE BOLEYN’S APPEARANCE on the day she died, specifically what she chose to be her clothes to die in, was carefully choreographed for there was a set of rules governing how to dress for death in Tudor England if one was a member of the elite and about to be executed. In this six wives documentary from History Calling, we’ll use this execution of a queen (which was also one of the most famous executions in history) as a case study to look at how historical fashions were adapted during the Tudor period if one was of high social rank and on the way to the scaffold. We’ll think about how clothing was used to communicate to spectators and why Anne made particular choices about what colours and fabrics to wear, the neckline of her dress and the unexpected style of her hood. I’ll also share with you how some other execution victims chose to dress for their final appearance in this world and what happened to an execution victim’s clothes after they died. We’ll see how early drawings of Anne Boleyn’s final moments got her outfit wrong and use a history versus Hollywood approach to see which depiction of Anne Boleyn's execution on screen has provided the best recreation of her outfit. Henry VIII’s second wife (and the mother of Elizabeth I) has always been famous for her fashion sense and her understanding of how to make a statement with clothing carried on right up until her dying breath.
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